Good for you!!! And good for you, 2!!!

What to write, what to write...ah, yes...write what I know...which is very little...write WHO I know may just work better. Ideas and Ideals come as easy to us as dreams--but to confront in order to understand, not to combat, that's a gift and skill we covet far too little.

Actually, I recently got into a stream of thought about "What is good" and "Who is good". First off, "He hath shown you O man what is good/and what does the Lord require of thee/ but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God." -from the song from Micah 6:8. So it helps me to come to the table with the attitude that I am "without excuse." When we claim no longer to be able to identify the good things, that is a choice, never an inevitable conclusion. What it means is that we no longer have any taste or desire for the good, and that is a learned response or a jaded response or both.

More difficult and personal is the question, Who is good? If one has any access to one's inner thoughts or dreams, as in the recent movie "Inception", one must give up on the notion that, "I am good, that's who's good!!!" As absurd as this looks on paper, yet we still most often act as if it were true; then there is an even a more absurd thought/action, "Well I may not be all that good--but I'm always right!" As in the tee that states, "You have every right to my own opinion!" And in honor of the absurd we both see and know, we begin to stop trying to achieve "the good"--which is not, sometimes, a bad place to start--or re-start!

Most difficult for us, esp. Christians, is to understand what Jesus replied to the Pharisees and Sadducees. i.e. "Why do you call me good?" Humanists often seize on this as proof that Jesus was a "good" (by what standard???) teacher but not God. The following sentence doesn't make it any easier for humanists or Christians but is ideal for the Deist, i.e. "God alone is good."

But do notice that Jesus did not deny being good any more than he denied being God. Because his questioners were not interested in His answer anyway, Jesus went straight to the Jewish method of answering questions with more questions, in so doing not only contradicting the questioner but exposing his motives as well. The person who starts to question Jesus with the preface, "Good teacher,what must we do....?" was and is usually speaking ironically and possibly sarcastically.

The motive is to dismiss Jesus and thereby dismiss all assaults on our self-made righteousness, which I would claim is a universal human response.

Jesus started with the assumption, and complete knowledge, that these men were in fact plotting to find an excuse to kill Him. And no one knew that better than He did, who also understood what is really Good, not just pleasant to all-too-human ears,the feelings of men, and our religious reflexes just to name a few.

Men in general try to, as Einstein observed, "Dismiss Christ with a bon mot."(my paraphrase) But, we usually say let's just do it, and the sooner the better, lest we be forced to deal with our own inadequacies, and our contradictory lust for Godhood and absolute autonomy, the latter being the greatest of all obvious lies, since we have never been autonomous at all, even at our "inception." Hence it would be better if we abandoned the insane attempt towards absurd levels of autonomy, for which we are so obviously not designed, and attempt rather what the AA slogan says,"Look for The Good", which, with the help of the Designer, is actually a reasonable goal."And your reasonable service."

Isn't Jesus GOOD?